Cruisin' for a bruisin'

I have friends who cruise—you know, take trips on boats whose point is essentially to have the appearance of travel with the substance of remaining stationary. Kind of. & they periodically urge me to join them on one of the trips.

The experience has never appealed to me for a couple of reasons. One: I am not what is known as a good sailor. I got queasy on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier. I don’t see the positive aspect of paying out a couple of grand to spend seven days tossing my cookies. If I wanted an internal cleanse, I’d go to an ashram.

But almost as important is the overwhelming fakery of the modern-day cruise industry. A floating casino with hot-&-cold running activities to keep you revved up for the never-ending food spreads. It’s all manufactured, to my mind.

Occasionally they pull into a port—Ketchikan, St Martin, Acapulco, Kristiansand, whatever—so you & 679 of your closest shipmates can swarm over the souvenir shops for six hours before you have to be back on board to heave off for the next leg. This is not my idea of a good time no matter how I look at it. I don’t like being cooped in, herded around or being ordered to be festive.

Then there are the cabins—which, from watching reruns of “The Love Boat” you might anticipate would be analogous to a Marriott room. Well, maybe the Marriott’s room’s bathroom.

Plus the health hazards. Seriously—cruise ships are floating plague infestations. They concentrate more germs than a kindergarten convention. Flu, norovirus, Legionnaire’s Disease. When you coop hundreds of people up for days, & a couple of people get sick, it’s going to spread.

But here’s a new twist on the whole cruisin’ for fun scheme: a woman on board a Scandinavian cruise fell ill & while being transferred to a rescue boat at sea was dropped into the ocean. 

I suppose These Things Happen. But only if you’re daft enough to get on the ship in the first place.

No, you’re not going to get me onto a Fun Ship any time soon.

Latest pet trend

If you’re feeling a bit ragged after filing your taxes, or about the latest news out of Congress, here’s something that might provide a pickup: Petite Lap Giraffe. From the “world wide famous Sokoblovsky Farms”.

If you haven’t seen PLGs, those wonderful comrades at Sokoblovsky have helpfully posted the videos “as seen on American commercial” for DirecTV. (Scroll down past the pix of the “parentals.”)

Even though I’m sure it’s really not within my discretionary income budget, & my landlord would throw a fit, I’ve put myself on the waiting list for a calf. The next one is expected in 156 days & already promised to a prince.

& the wait will be a while:

BTW—way to run a viral marketing campaign, DirecTV.

Economic McNuggets

I don’t know what category this story falls into: economics, tragi-comedy, restaurant news, end-of-days, whatever. But McDonalds, that ultimate symbol of American culture, devoted yesterday to a highly-advertised big-splash hiring drive.

The stated goal was to add 50,000 employees to the 650,000 already working there in the US.

Which sounds impressive until you consider that we’re not talking full-time employment, with sustainable income, benefits or any sort of security. (In fairness, I can’t think of any job that offers security, except corporate executive managers, who seem to get paid spectacularly well even when they get fired.) In fact, employment at McDonalds brought us the neologism McJobs, which the OED defines as “an unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects.” & this hiring spree includes a attempt to change perception of them as a corporate employing entity.

Another troubling aspect of this story is the news that many of the McJob seekers and holders are middle class adults with families to support, not the teenagers working after school that we picture in the uniforms and visors.

The smug joke about post-university career prospects used to be that the graduate with an engineering degree asks, “How does it work?”; the graduate with an accounting degree asks, “How much will it cost? And the graduate with a liberal arts degree asks, “Would you like fries with that?” Evidently the engineers and accountants are now competing with teenagers, art historians and recent immigrants for part-time jobs at minimum wage.

From reports on the web from local news outlets, McDonalds’ National Hiring Day campaign has been successful. Restaurants from Hawaii to Maine have been stormed by applicants.

Thing is—like the product the corporation sells—these jobs are bigger on form than substance, which is bad for the individuals and the economy. Great for the stockholder and corporate management, though, so I guess we can stamp “mission accomplished” over it and move on.

Recruiters 19

You’ll recall my surreal experience with the Recruiting Chick for an enterprise software company here in the Silicon Valley. and the first farce of an attempted phone conversation with the Hiring Manager.

Well, despite their best efforts to inject the Marx Brothers into business life, the HM eventually did contact me. He was late calling, but not as late as the recruiter so I let it slide.

Interestingly, he opened by asking how much of the job I’d already covered with the RC. I refrained from stating the fact that we hadn’t talked about it at all since 1)she’d blown 1/3 of our allotted time by calling late; 2)she wasted most of the rest of the conversation trying to throttle irrelevant salary information out of me; 3)at no point did she bring up the actual job.

In fact, her only essay into the position under discussion was an email the following day to ask me if I realized the job was public sector marketing, not healthcare. And when I replied that the description she’d sent me focused on healthcare within the PS arena, her response indicated that the description “wasn’t quite on target”, and the additional information she gave me was useless if her intent was any sort of clarification.

Okay—so, back to the actual conversation with the HM. I just told him that the job description I’d been given apparently wasn’t an accurate depiction of the opportunity under discussion, since it focused on healthcare. HM humphed about a bit, thought RC might have been working from an older document and sent me the “right” one.

Which was exactly what the RC had sent me, although she apparently hadn’t bothered to read it. But then, looks like HM hadn’t, either, when he forwarded it to recruiting to start the process.

It turns out that he didn’t want a product marketer at all (despite the title on the JD), but a solutions marketer, who could identify and pull together entire solutions of multiple internal and partner product lines for presenting to public sector customers (which HM never really defined—everything about this group of people was amorphous and vague). I spoke with this guy for more than 30 minutes, asking a lot of questions, and I still didn’t get a picture of what this creature they want looks like.

So, red flags—which had already sprouted up like poppies in April from my conversation with RC and the flapdoodle about scheduling a simple phone call with HM—expanded to the size of banners at a May Day parade at the Kremlin. The level of dysfunction, the inflexibility in their approach to information exchange, the inability to define or articulate what the hell they want, their utter lack of communication—all Very Bad Signs.

HM had said he had more candidates to interview and I should hear back from RC the following week. But within two days I had one of her chirpy emails—again misspelling my name—to say, “At this time, we have decided to continue to interview other candidates for the role with more Solutions Marketing background.  I will contact you if any other positions open up that might be a better fit for your background and experience.”

With difficulty I restrained myself from wishing her good luck with that, since they didn’t seem to be able to define, much less articulate, what they want. And the qualities most in evidence from everyone I dealt with weren’t ones I’d want to surround myself with 50-60 hours per week.

Now, I’m well aware that in the corporate scheme of things, these clowns don’t give a toss that they’ve exposed themselves to me as incompetent buffoons with delusions of superiority.

They’re holding something they think I want—employment. Which is true. But that doesn’t prevent me from seeing them from what they are and finding that both risible and contemptible.

Next year in Jerusalem...

Today at sundown, Passover begins. That’s the festival that celebrates the Children of Israel being freed from slavery in Egypt. The Pesach season itself goes on for eight days, involves a kind of spring cleaning in Jewish houses & the shunning of any bread-like food that requires leavening (yeast, baking powder/soda, etc.). That’s because when the word came to the Jews that they had to get out of Dodge (so to speak), there was no time to let bread rise. They had to grab their gear & git.

Probably the most well-known part of Passover is the Seder, the dinner that begins the holiday, brings family together & reinforces the history by following the instructions in the Haggadah. It’s an interesting ritual, but if you’re in a hurry, Slate has conveniently provided a two-minute Haggadah to give you the big picture.

I’m not Jewish, but I’ve been to a few Seders, including one put on by Jews for Jesus; & another by friends in the film industry where the Questions were asked by the youngest male, black Catholic attending. & then we watched the Passover sequence from C.B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, as you do.

But here’s something of an update for the 21^st Century (or for year 5771 in the Jewish calendar): the Pesach story if Moses had had access to the Information Highway.

It still includes part of the Passover sequence from The Ten Commandments. It’s good to hold on to tradition.

Hit the showers

So, having plumped up the pillows & smoothed the 500-thread-count designer sheets, hotels are now spiffing up the showering experience, according to the WSJ.

High on the list are multiple shower heads, including one shooting down from a crystal chandelier. (No, I am not making this up.)

Frankly, I’m not a fan of that straight-down-from-the-ceiling shower, because there are times when I don’t want my hair wet, but it does look cool when you see it in photos.

However, I’m confused about something. The chains are eliminating bathtubs—according to Wyndham’s head of “development planning & construction”, “Most people, when they’re going to work in the morning, don’t drop & lounge in a tub.”

In that case, what’s up with the hammock in the shower?

Also, while I’m on the topic of the shower hammock—I hope they have a lot of liability insurance because getting in & out of a hammock in a wet, tiled bathroom is an invitation to some massive injuries.

Recruiters 18

Lest you think recruiters have hauled their heads out of their lower gastro-intestinal systems recently, let me reassure you by recounting a recent exchange I had.

I received an unsolicited email from a recruiter named Raj in New Jersey touting a contract product manager for mobile apps…in Chicago. I’ll grant that if you’re in Jersey you may have a loose grasp of geography, but I’d really have thought that the whole different state thing between the job and my address might have sparked a thought. Moreover, I don't have experience with mobile apps, and I don't know how Raj got the idea that I did.

But it didn’t end there. When I replied that the California-Illinois commute is longer than I like, he wanted to know if I’d be interested in relocating; for a six-month contract. I said that any relocation would have to be paid by the client, which I thought would end the conversation, but I was obviously too subtle for him.

He replied wanting to know what hourly rate I’m looking for. Well, I flung out some high-end figures, because the whole thing was becoming risible. He finally contacted his client and was crushed to discover that they wouldn’t “take care of any relocation charges.” Like I thought they would.

But here’s the kicker: he still pushed, “I am not sure if you are interested in this position anymore. Let me know if this would workout for you.”

Uh, that would be a negatory, good buddy. Maybe you can find someone in Florida interested in it.

Recruiters 17

Wouldn’t you just know: last week I was contacted by a recruiter for Walmart, for a product manager opening.

He was so sure that I’d grab it that the only questions his email contained were what I want by way of compensation, and he attached a copy of their benefits to further entice me.

I really didn’t know what to tell him. I despise everything about Walmart. Their labor practices are abhorrent, they destroy small businesses and town centers, and their sourcing policies have driven their suppliers to leave the US to manufacture goods in Third World countries where child and slave labor are still vibrant and where there are no pesky requirements for sanitation or safety in the factory.

My first response was shaped around concerns that a career path in a company that’s systematically paid women less and given them fewer promotions than men would be necessarily limited. (The most recent employee lawsuit by tens of thousands of current and former WM female employees is currently before the US Supreme Court; WM is trying to decertify the suit as a class action and make individual women file individual cases.) I mean, I don’t like the idea of being valued at 2/3 of a man, a practice that—while embedded in the Constitution for the purposes of determining national political representation—was kind of rendered moot by the events of 1861-1865, and the 13^th Amendment.

But if I didn’t already have insurmountable ethical objections to working for massa in de big house, that list of benefits would have been enough to chuck the job:

There’s a bewilderment of healthcare insurance options, from Healthcare Reimbursement Accounts (deductibles ranging from $750 to $2200 for the employee only), through High Deductible Plans (obviously with even higher deductibles), to the bog-standard HMO. The benefits guide doesn’t say what the premium costs to the employee are, but my guess is that, between the premiums and the deductibles, the majority of WM’s minimum-wage “associates” can’t afford it and; are effectively without insurance coverage.

They give a whopping six whole paid holidays, and it comes as no surprise that instead of vacation they have the dreaded PTO—paid time off. For the new employee this works out to 12 days per year for all time off: vacation, sick days, time off for medical appointments, job interviews, etc. Plus two floating holidays. Whoopee.

Oh—after 90 days of employment you get a WM discount card, entitling you to 10% discount on their ecommerce site. Ten percent off cheap crap; now there’s incentive.

Okay, I refrained from making any political statements in my reply—I told the recruiter that I don’t have any experience in retail and wished him luck in finding the right candidate.

But here’s the kicker for me: he replied, “For what it’s worth, my hiring manager reviewed a large number of candidates and liked only a couple. You were one of those : )”

I can’t get arrested in the high tech job market but a manager at Walmart picks me out of a boatload of CVs? Ugh—it’s like being back in junior high and only the creepy guys want to ask you to dance.

I mean—the really creepy ones.

One April day

One hundred fifty years ago today the political differences that had been brewing for decades led to a shooting war between one group of Americans and another. What’s commonly referred to as the Civil War began on 12 April 1861, when cannon manned by soldiers of the Confederate States of America fired on troops of the United States of America at Fort Sumter, located on an island in the harbor of Charleston, S.C.

Eleven states from below the Mason-Dixon Line seceded from the Union following the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in November 1860. He was the first Republican to achieve that high office. The party itself dated only from 1854.

The issues causing the war were complex and still argued today. Southerners mostly claim they left the Union in defense of “states rights”, declaring that the federal government was overreaching its Constitutional mandate and interfering too deeply in the lives of we-the-people. But the particular right that they were defending was the system of human chattel slavery that underpinned the agrarian economy of the South.

Conversely, Yankees like to aver that they spent their blood and treasure to eradicate slavery. This ignores all the economic complications, not to mention the fact that, while for many of them ending slavery was positive in theory, if they thought about the post-bondage world at all, they didn’t expect the ex-slaves to move into their communities or compete with them for jobs.

Well, whatever. The fire eaters of South Carolina were the first to secede and it seemed appropriate that they be the first to fire on federal troops. This initial engagement (General Pierre Gustave Toussaint Beauregard, gotta love that name, for the CSA, Major Robert Anderson commanding on the island) didn’t last long. On the 10^th Beauregard demanded the fort’s surrender; Anderson refused. On the 12^th Confederate batteries opened up and Anderson surrendered at 0230 the next day.

Thus began four years of unremitting misery, bloodshed and destruction; decades of post-war reconstruction and bitterness; and a legacy of intractability and unsettled scores that marks our lives even today.

Leaving aside the tone of politics in Washington, D.C. today, which are so divisive I’m sure that the only reason we haven’t seen some congressmoron haul out a sidearm and; blast an opponent is because there are metal detectors at all the entrances to the Capitol, I was convinced of this inheritance when I once dated a guy from Georgia. He was educated and taught junior high history. Yet when I happened to mention Sherman’s March to the Sea, he erupted as though it had taken place last week. He couldn’t help it; it was hardwired into his genetic code.

(On the subject of Capitol crimes, as far as I know no firearm has been discharged in the hallowed halls of Congress, but in 1856 a Congressman from South Carolina, Preston Brooks, attacked Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, beating him severely with a thick walking stick. Brooks had intended to call Sumner out to a duel, but was persuaded that Sumner wasn’t a gentleman and therefore not eligible to participate in an affair of honor, but should be thrashed as an inferior. Given the lack of civility displayed by current occupants of the Capitol, I guess it’s a good thing they know nothing of history, or we’d see a lot more canes appearing at debates.)

Also, my thesis advisor in grad school (on the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, BTW) used to refer to the period of 1861-1865 as The Woah of Nawthe’n Aggression. I’m pretty sure he taught an undergrad survey course on the War twice a year in hopes that it would end differently some semester.

But it didn’t, and for the next four years it’ll be a good thing to revisit the events that shaped our society so irrevocably.

Going to the birds

Here’s something to make you feel better: video of a man who rescued a baby hummingbird.

I’m kind of interested in what appears to be hummingbird chow that he’s feeding the chick from an eyedropper. I mean, it doesn’t look like sugar syrup, looks like it may have some nutritional gunk to build those flapping muscles.

Anyway—a nice change from Congress acting like petulant four-year-olds, nuclear waste seeping out of the reactor in Fukushima & the Middle East exploding in our faces (& with WMDs we sold to all parties).